Back up solution please

I'm afraid it's back to that old Chestnut "Backup". Is there a solution. Having tried many times to back up my C drive, reluctantly I have had to cancel it after several hours on each occasion, as it seems to be going nowhere. It seems stuck at about 25%. Vista and all the other Windows O/S in the past didn't seem to have this problem. I am stuck at the moment with not being able to back up my computer, that is unless i leave it on for 24 hours. Has anyone got a solution. Rant over. Many thanks. Lee

What are you using to backup your drive?

If you are trying to backup the entire drive as an image, Windows has a built-in tool for that and it works quite well. if you are trying to just backup files, SyncToy is free and works very well, too.

i would carefully reconsider using windows backup and restore, as the only method of backing up.

The problem with this utility is that you will encounter problems restoring files from it (both manually and thru restore), as i and many others have, whats even worse these are problems whereby there is either no solution, nor any workaround known, or yours will be a new specific problem which no one else has encountered and so cant offer advice...


just google around and you will see what i mean - good luck

+2 for Macrium Reflect.

ok great thank you all, ill look into acronis, i seriously do not ever want to have to reformat my externall HDD after failed backup/restore.

bealine said:

I'm afraid it's back to that old Chestnut "Backup". Is there a solution. Having tried many times to back up my C drive, reluctantly I have had to cancel it after several hours on each occasion, as it seems to be going nowhere. It seems stuck at about 25%. Vista and all the other Windows O/S in the past didn't seem to have this problem. I am stuck at the moment with not being able to back up my computer, that is unless i leave it on for 24 hours. Has anyone got a solution. Rant over. Many thanks. Lee

The suggestions above focus on imaging.
"Backup and Restore" generically refers to two very different activities.
(1) Imaging - Snapshot of a whole partition (OS, programs, data - the lot) and stored in large vhd files. Invaluable for recovering when your system fails or becomes flaky and you have no other simple resolution. Also if your HDD dies.
Easy and relatively quick (~<30 min) to make and restore.
(2) File/Folder - basically backs up personal material and standalone programs if you like. But not OS or installed programs. MS and others use multiple .zip files.

I think your problem is with (2) File/folder backup? Others experience a similar problem, particularly if they try to use DVD media for backup.

MS version of (1) and (2) work for many people including me. Other people have problems and look for alternatives.
Imaging Alternatives
I also use Macrium Reflect free and find it a robust, simple to use program, highly regarded by many. There are a number of others paid & free.
File/Folder Backup alternativesSome are
GFI, Cobian Backup, Comodo backup, Fbackup
You need to try them to see what suites you. So far none of them particularly impress me. For a largish file/folder backup (say 20GB) you will typically end up with a spanned zip archive. If you lose the first *.zip you lose the lot I think (others in the archive set are of the form ***.v01, .v02 etc).